Plans, sections, elevations, details, joinery, bathrooms, electrical layouts, finishes and specifications, with the engineering coordinated in.
You have council approval and a set of drawings, and your builder has said he needs more before he can price it properly. He's right, and it isn't him being difficult. Construction drawings vs DA drawings is the distinction underneath that conversation — the two sets answer different questions.
Development Application drawings show that the proposal meets the planning rules — form, siting, height, setbacks, character. Construction drawings are the instructions for building your house: plans, sections, elevations, details, joinery, bathrooms, electrical layouts, finishes and a written specification, with the engineering coordinated in so every sheet agrees.
This is where the house actually gets decided. Every junction, every level, every waterproofing detail, every cupboard, resolved on paper before anyone picks up a tool. It's the most hours in the project by a distance, and it's the most craft.
A builder can only price what's in front of them. My job is to make sure it's complete.
A complete set of construction drawings and a written specification, with the consultants' work coordinated in, means a builder can price exactly what you're building. Detailed drawings minimise price variations and questions during the build.
The house decided in full, while deciding is still calm and cheap. Every detail drawn here is a question answered once, carefully, in the office rather than five times, quickly, on site.
You can build from a thin set, and on a simple job people do. What you'd be carrying is everything the set doesn't say — those decisions still get made, later, at the pace the site demands.
This is where I do the most work and, honestly, where I do my best work. Every detail, junction, level and cupboard gets decided here, drawn properly, and checked against the engineering and the consultants until the whole set agrees with itself. A builder can only price what's in front of them, so my job is to make sure what's in front of them is complete — that's how price variations and questions during the build get minimised. Most of what you spend goes to the builder. My share is small by comparison, and the work of this stage is what protects the large one.
DA drawings answer the planning question: does this comply with the City Plan. They show siting, form, height, setbacks and how the building sits in the street. Construction drawings answer the building question: how is this actually made. They carry dimensions, junctions, waterproofing details, structural coordination, joinery, electrical layouts and a specification. A council-approved plan isn't a buildable plan.
Detailed enough that nobody has to guess and nobody has to invent. A useful test is whether two builders pricing the same set would produce comparable quotes. The specification matters as much as the drawings: most of the difference between two quotes lives in what materials and standards were actually named. That's the level I document to, and it's deliberate.
The drawings and specifications needed for the approvals, then the further drawings, schedules and details needed to actually build, plus coordinating the specialist consultants into a single set. For a Brisbane house that means the full plan set, sections and elevations, details, joinery and bathroom drawings, electrical and lighting layouts, a finishes schedule and a written specification.
You can, and on a simple job on an unconstrained site it sometimes works out. What you're buying is a set that leaves decisions unmade, and those decisions still get made — later, without the time to weigh them properly. Most of what you spend on a renovation goes to the builder. Documentation is a small part of the whole, and its job is to protect the large part.
There's a great deal to look at — it's drawings rather than pictures. This stage carries the most hours because it carries the most decisions: every detail resolved once, in the office, instead of repeatedly on site under pressure. It's also where problems are cheapest to find — a clash between the engineer's beam and your ceiling height shows up on a drawing, not in a phone call from a builder with a crane booked.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.
